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Comment by joeshaw | Hacker News Reader

Looks to me like everybody wins.

Xamarin gets IP -- meaning they don't have to do a clean-room, source-compatible reimplementation of MonoTouch and Mono for Android, and all the risks that go with that -- in exchange for taking on the support of Novell's existing customers. Customers they probably want anyway.

Novell/SUSE gets to get out of the Mono business altogether, which is probably good for them seeing as they laid off the entire engineering staff.

The Mono community gets some clarification about the stewardship of the project. Novell contributed a lot of resources (bug tracker, mailing list and wiki hosting, etc.) and now Xamarin is on the hook for that stuff. It helps clarify the future of the project.

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I'm not feeling as good about it. What I see is Novell washing their hands of Mono and giving it to a company that has existed for a few months. Now more than ever Mono exists as long as Miguel de Icaza wants to keep working on it. At least with Novell there was some cushion from that.

I disagree, and I think Mono is stronger now with a startup behind it. With Novell you only had the perception of some cushion. Novell laid off the entire engineering staff behind Mono, including Miguel. If he had simply walked away from the project after that, do you think it would have continued regardless of whether Novell held onto it?

With Xamarin the Mono folks have some skin in the game beyond a paycheck and their own passion. Even if Miguel were to walk away -- something I find unlikely -- there is a business now that depends upon its success and not some neglected division within a rudderless company.

Mono was collateral damage of Novell's purchase by Attachmate. Mono probably didn't rate a mention in the negotiation's around Novell's acquisition.

The idea of a safety net for projects like these is just an illusion. There's never a safety net. You've just got to take things as they come and have a backup plan.

It's good relative to the assumed baseline of Novell keeping the MonoTouch etc. IPs but not actually investing in or supporting them, and Xamarin having to recreate everything from zero themselves.

I agree but you'll pardon me if I still think Novell's new owners are a bunch of jerks. Just less so.

That said I think this goes beyond IP for Xamarin. As you said they get the existing customers but they're also available to new customers a few months earlier. Mobile development is growing blazingly fast right now and even a months delay can mean someone decides to go with another product.

With the major financing that companies like Appcelerator have gotten Xamarin needs all the advantages it can get.

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